But every rain cloud really did have a silver lining.
At least it didn’t smell so bad anymore.
When I was nine years old, Rowena told me a dangerous caste of Fae had infiltrated our city. Slender, diaphanous, beautiful, with a cloud of gossamer hair and dainty features, they were capable of slipping inside a human, and taking over their limbs and lives completely.
Once they assumed a human “skin,” they were no longer detectable to sidhe-seers and, thus camouflaged, vanished forever beyond our reach to prey endlessly upon our race.
This made them a most deadly threat to our order, she told me in a hushed voice, who could possess her charges at the abbey at any time; in fact, she confided, they had.
But—and there was always a but with the old bitch—she had a special charm that she, and she alone as Grand Mistress of sidhe-seers, could employ to see inside a person to the despicable, life-stealing Fae within.
At nine, nothing seemed far-fetched to me. I’d fully expected to find the world beyond my cage as densely populated by superheroes and villains as my world on the telly.
For nearly a year Rowena steered me down the corridors of our abbey as she inspected her girls, guided me out into the streets and alleys and businesses, where we hunted the dastardly villains, a secret team of two tasked with a great, secret mission that made me feel important and good.
And when she’d identify a Gripper with the charm that never worked for me, we’d return to her office at the abbey where, with great gravity and ceremony, she’d place the luminous Sword of Light across my upturned palms and command me to save our order, perhaps even our world.
She taught me to be quick and stealthy about it. She told me how and where to stab and slice and kill. No one suspects a child, not even when they carry a sword. Most thought it a toy. I rarely needed to employ extreme velocity to complete my mission. It was easy to get close. Adults fret over lost, crying children.
Do whatever you must to save our world: no deceit or ploy unjust, she’d taught me. The end justifies the means.
I’ve come to understand the means define you.
Although they are exceedingly rare, Grippers exist.
That wasn’t a lie.
There is, however, no charm that allows anyone to see them.
I took twenty-three lives that year and I don’t know why. Mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, I carved holes in their families, shattering their hearts and their worlds. Perhaps they crossed her in business dealings. Perhaps they looked at her wrong at the post office. Regardless, none of them had been possessed. In one of her journals that I didn’t find until I was older, chronicling her own greatness with chilling narcissism, Rowena had penned: “The child was sent to Me to address my grievances and right those wrongs done Me, controlled by a penurious toy I purchased from a street vendor.”
I don’t know why she stopped either. Perhaps there were only twenty-three names on her most-hated list. Perhaps so many murders by sword garnered too much attention from the Garda and she’d not wanted me caught and placed behind bars. Though she’d instructed me to hide the corpses, many were eventually found. The universe has a way of betraying those secrets we endeavor to hold near.
The day I learned what I’d done, I decided there were only three courses of action open to me.
Kill myself because I was a monster, too.
Live the rest of my life hating myself, unable to ever atone, consumed by a heart of darkness that would cast no light into a world that badly needed some.
Or lock the past up in a box with those other murders and carry a heart—as pure as it had once been—into the present, determined to do better, inscribing the Latin motto on the tatters of my soul: Actus me invito factus non est meus actus. Acts done by my body against my will are not my acts.
I knew each of my victim’s names and was able to locate most of their families.
I protect them still.
High voltage, the unforgettable sound
I PARKED MY MOTORCYCLE IN front of the abbey, grabbed the backpack that held a change of clothing for later, and loped into the front entrance of the ancient fortress wearing ripped jeans, boots, and a white tank top that did nothing to conceal what was wrong with my arm. I wasn’t going to hide whatever was happening to me; isolated soldiers are a sniper’s favorite target. My sword was slung over my back, knives in my boots, but in deference to the children on the estate, I carry no guns inside those walls. I can’t bear the thought of an innocent coming to harm as a result of my carelessness.
I love Arlington Abbey.
With accommodations for a thousand sidhe-seers, the fortress is riddled with secret passages behind bookcases and fireplaces, has dozens of concealed nooks and cubbies, and has always held an air of irresistible mystery to me.
From the meditation pavilion hemmed by shaped topiary that legend claims once lived and breathed, protecting the abbey, to the elaborate maze that spans seven acres near the lake, it was once a badly run motherhouse for women trained to be reclusive, cowed, and uncertain.
Things have changed. We train, we fight, we get dirty and bloody and push each other harder all the time. The abbey’s filled to capacity, with a waiting list a mile long to get in.
Entry-level sidhe-seers, Initiates can spend anywhere from two to ten years in training as they learn to use their gifts. Those gifts we’ve been seeing, since the Song of Making restored magic to our world, are unlike anything we’ve encountered before.
Apprentices, who’ve achieved a level of proficiency sufficient to pass a series of difficult tests, will spend another few years in additional training. Some might never graduate to the final level: the Adepts, those of us who’ve harnessed our gifts and serve as trainers for the Initiates and Apprentices.
Then there’s the Shedon, the council of popularly elected sidhe-seers that govern the abbey.
The motherhouse is no longer a tyrannical prison of coercion and tightly controlled, skewed press. In my youth I’d blasted through those corridors at full throttle, feared and distrusted by everyone around me. I used to hate that, seeing the fear. It made me feel alone. But I’ve galvanized my truths. Life is funny, it makes you choose sides all the time. Fearless people are outsiders. The fearful have many places to belong. They’re the fluffy white sheep that stick close to shepherds, let others feed, fatten, and shear them, and spiral in a tight, panicked knot if a wolf draws near.
When I’m surrounded by that herd, I can’t understand the conversation that usually goes something like this: I’m scared, what do you think we should do? I dunno, what do you think we should do? I dunno, let’s ask somebody else.